After realizing I never made videos mentioning I would be at Emerald City Comic Con and SakuraCon this year, I decided something needed to be done. Here’s a video outlining every other event I currently plan to be at in 2015 – though if new events pop up, you’ll want to make sure you’re following me on other social media!

Are you going to any of these events? Do you know of any other cool conventions I might not have heard about? Leave me a comment!

I’ve been trying my hardest to make it up to you guys lately that I took such a long blogging break by making it really easy to find everything I created in the absence. Between my cosplay news, books I’ve read and videos I’ve posted, I’ve been a busy little bee!

Today’s blog post will give you a round up of the most noteworthy videos I’ve made in the last month or so, starting with this GeekGirlCon Candyland video I posted yesterday!

I am quite proud of it, and my friends were all such good sports for being involved. I love showcasing the things that make me happy for others, and I think this video did that perfectly.

Next was this hilariously exciting Snack Exchange video I filmed with Joe – we had organized a collab of sorts with a couple living in Korea named Evan and Rachel. They sent us a big box of Korean snacks in exchange for a box of American foods they missed from home.

We had a BLAST trying everything. Some of it was weird, some was absolutely disgusting… but a lot of it was really great! Thanks again, Evan and Rachel!

The last video I want to share with you is my FALL BOOK HAUL! I can’t get enough of books and reading lately and this is my newest stack of stuff to read.

I can’t wait to get through many of these, and October has been a big reading month for me. I’m only 2 books away from hitting my 30 book goal for 2014! You can bet I’m gonna raise that goal next year – 30 was easy!

I hope you enjoyed my videos, and I’ll be back soon with some more October/Halloween fun!

This past weekend was GeekGirlCon up here in Seattle, which is a great little convention centered around being a fun and welcoming community that promotes the role of women in geek culture. While men and boys are welcomed and encouraged to attend, the con itself exists to “celebrate and honor the legacy of women contributing to science and technology; comics, arts, and literature; and game play and game design by connecting geeky women world-wide.” I hadn’t been in a couple of years and it was such a treat to see how much it’s grown in that time.

While I attending a number of amazing panels (Working with Worbla & Women and the Horror Fandom, to name a couple) my favorite part of the weekend was cosplaying. This was my third official cosplaying event and I was so pumped to rewear and old costume and try out a new one.

On Saturday, my friends and I wore our Candyland costumes. We debuted these at PAX earlier this year, but since then we obtained a gender-swapped Mr. Mint, filling the group out even more.

I love these costumes. Not only is Queen Frostine the first costume I made entirely myself, 100%, everything from scratch – but it also brings a certain joy to people’s faces when they realize what we are that I just love. Nearly everyone played Candyland as a child, but very few have seen the characters in any way other than a few inches tall on a game board. Not to mention all the small children who just want to follow us around because they like our “pretty dresses”. Wearing these Candyland costumes is always a delight and GeekGirlCon did not disappoint.

Now we just need the other characters! Anyone interested?

Sunday, however – Sunday was the day I had looked forward to with both extreme euphoria and fear. After months of work, my Sailor Moon costume was ready, and I couldn’t wait to show it off at the con surrounded by seven (SEVEN!) other scouts.

I’ve been watching Sailor Moon since I was a child – I remember waking my mom up to watch it in her bedroom at 7am before I even knew what anime was or how much it would later affect my life. I remember my resurgence of interest when I was 11, when I started doodling Sailor Scouts on my middle school notes and calling dibs on which scouts we were with my friends at lunch time. I never got to be Sailor Moon. This was a big point of contention for me in middle school – I WAS THE BLONDE ONE. I WANTED TO BE SAILOR MOON.

Sometimes it takes years for justice to be served, I’ve found. Fifteen years, to be exact – because at 26 years old, my cosplay group unanimously decided I was the obvious choice for Sailor Moon. I was giddy, I’m not going to lie. This costume, this group of friends dressing up as the Sailor Scouts… this fulfills a fifteen year old dream for me. So take that, middle school friends. Who’s Sailor Moon now?

Photo by Sharctank

I had an absolute blast. We found that walking around with a couple of scouts wasn’t too bad – you could still manage to make your way around the con and see things, but if you had more than three (or, god forbid, the whole group) you might as well just stop and pose for pictures. Because that’s all you’d be able to do.

But we loved it. When you spend as much time on costumes as it takes to make these, you want your picture taken. You want to see people’s faces light up when they see you. Sailor Scouts day at GeekGirlCon was one of my favorite days of all time, top five at least. I had the most fun, and I can’t wait to wear them again sometime. Especially since we have a Neptune and a Uranus, they just couldn’t make it to this particular event!

I want to give a special shoutout to GeekGirlCon itself for being such an amazing atmosphere in which to wear costumes – the con has very strict rules about asking cosplayers before you take pictures and it enhanced the experience so very much. I had a number of wonderful conversations with people who enjoyed my costumes because of it, as well as chatting with other cosplayers (who were all extremely friendly and nice). I also loved how open everyone at this con was, turning the “Sex Scenes from the Female Gaze” panel into good old fashioned smut story time. Where else could authors share their favorite sex scenes aloud in front of a respectful and mature audience? It was wonderful.

GeekGirlCon was a fantastic experience, and even though I swore I’d take a break from making costumes until 2015, I’m already mentally breaking that rule by figuring out what’s next.

Okay, I haven’t just “sort of fallen off the blogging wagon” – it’s completely left me behind and I’m going to need to call a Lyft to catch back up. Even though writing is just about my favorite thing to do, whenever I start to get busy this blog is the first thing to get the axe. I don’t mean to! I love this blog! But I am going to try to be better. I mean we’ll see, since next month is NaNoWriMo, but I am going to try.

So what’s been getting in the way of blogging for me? Well, I have two easy answers to that, actually.

1. Cosplay

2. Reading

Usually I have a million excuses as to why I haven’t got time for a damn thing, but lately, it’s been those two things, 24/7. If you haven’t noticed, I have recently jumped headfirst back into reading, and it’s been seriously awesome. Every once in awhile I’d feel that little tug, like there was something missing from my life – and it was totally reading. I’ve been doing a book challenge over on Goodreads to read 30 books this year (modest, I know, but I wanted to start realistically) and I am flying through! You can follow me there if you want to see what I’m reading and how much I like the books I’ve read.

And the cosplay… don’t even get me started. To be fair, I love it. I am head over heels, honeymoon phase totally smitten with it. But good lord it’s expensive and time consuming. I don’t even want to know how much money and how many hours I have dumped into this hobby already. I really don’t.

But this weekend I’ll be at Geek Girl Con here in Seattle and I’ll be cosplaying both days! Saturday I will be reprising my Queen Frostine costume I wore at PAX, as we now have the addition of a Mr. Mint and plan to enter the costume contest with them.

And then on Sunday I get to fulfill a life-long dream of cosplaying as Sailor Moon. That’s right – I’m dressing up as Usagi herself. The best part is, we have an entire cosplay group of every single Sailor Scout, including the outer scouts. The only sad part is that our Uranus can’t actually make the event, but we know she’ll be there in spirit.

I don’t know how I managed to snag Sailor Moon, but I am so pumped it’s actually happening. I’ve put literal blood, sweat and tears into this project. Between a sewing machine needle going directly into my thumb, to hot-gluing my finger prints off, to having to redo a depressing number of parts of this costume due to mishaps and mess-ups… this pretty soldier of love and justice cannot wait for her costume to be finished so she can just wear it and feel like a magical girl.

I will definitely be posting pictures! Be sure to follow my cosplay page on Facebook for more regular updates about our costume journey.

That’s all for now! Please don’t abandon me – this blog will be up and running again very soon. I promise. Pinky swear. See you later!

Kristina is a book obsessed, novel-writing, costume-making, project managing lover of all things cute. This blog is a snapshot of a married girl working in the tech industry and living her best nerdy life.